Tesla, Nikola

Born: 1856 AD
Died: 1943 AD

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1856 – He was born on the 10th day of July of this year in Smiljan, Military Frontier, Austrian Empire. His baptism certificate reports that he was born on June 28, 1856, and christened by the Serbian Orthodox priest Toma Oklobdžija. His father was Rev. Milutin Tesla, a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church Metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci. His mother was uka Mandi , herself a daughter of a Serbian Orthodox Church priest.

1862 – His family moved to Gospi in this year. Tesla went to school in Karlovac. He finished a four year term in the span of three years

1875 – Tesla then studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz. While there, he studied the uses of alternating current. Some sources say he received Baccalaureate degrees from the university at Graz.

1880 – Tesla was later persuaded by his father to attend the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, which he attended for the summer term of 1880. However after his father died he left the university, only completing one term.

1881 – He moved to Budapest, Hungary, to work under Tivadar Puskás in a telegraph company, the National Telephone Company. There, he met Nebojša Petrovi , a young inventor from Austria. Although their encounter was brief, they did work on a project together using twin turbines to create continual power. On the opening of the telephone exchange in Budapest, Tesla became the chief electrician to the company, and was later engineer for the country’s first telephone system.

1882 – He moved to Paris, France to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company, designing improvements to electric equipment. In the same year, Tesla conceived of the induction motor and began developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields for which he received patents in 1888.

1884 – On the 6th day of June of this year, Tesla first arrived in the US in New York City. He had little besides a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor, his manager in his previous job.

1886 – He formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. The initial financial investors disagreed with Tesla on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually relieved him of his duties at the company. Tesla worked in New York as a common laborer from 1886 to 1887 to feed himself and raise capital for his next project.

1887 – He constructed the initial brushless alternating current induction motor, which he demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) in 1888. In the same year, he developed the principles of his Tesla coil and began working with George Westinghouse at Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company’s Pittsburgh labs.

1887 – Tesla began investigating what would later be called X-rays using his own single node vacuum tubes (similar to his patent #514,170 ). This device differed from other early X-ray tubes in that they had no target electrode.

1891 – He became a naturalized citizen of the United States at the age of 35. Tesla established his 35 South Fifth Avenue laboratory in New York during this same year. Later, Tesla would establish his Houston Street laboratory in New York at 46 E. Houston Street.

1892 – Tesla served, from this year to 1894, as the vice president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the forerunner (along with the Institute of Radio Engineers) of the modern-day IEEE.

1893 – From this year to 1895, he investigated high frequency alternating currents. After his demonstration of wireless communication in this year and after being the victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as America’s greatest electrical engineer.

1899 – He decided to move and began research in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he would have room for his high-voltage, high-frequency experiments. Upon his arrival, he told reporters that he was conducting wireless telegraphy experiments transmitting signals from Pikes Peak to Paris.

1902 – In June of this year, Tesla’s lab operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from Houston Street. The tower was finally dismantled for scrap during World War 1. Newspapers of the time labeled Wardenclyffe "Tesla’s million-dollar folly."

1904 – The US Patent Office reversed its decision and awarded Guglielmo Marconi the patent for radio, and Tesla began his fight to re-acquire the radio patent. On his 50th birthday in 1906, Tesla demonstrated his 200 hp (150 kW) 16,000-rpm bladeless turbine.

1910 – During 1910–1911 at the Waterside Power Station in New York, several of his bladeless turbine engines were tested at 100–5000 hp.

1915 – He filed a lawsuit against Marconi attempting, unsuccessfully, to obtain a court injunction against the claims of Marconi. After Wardenclyffe, Tesla built the Telefunken Wireless Station in Sayville, Long Island. Some of what he wanted to achieve at Wardenclyffe was accomplished with the Telefunken Wireless.

1917 – The facility was seized and torn down by the Marines, because it was suspected that German spies could use it.

1916 – He was awarded with an Edison Medal this year.

1943 – He died on the 7th day of January of this year. 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States credited him as being the inventor of the radio. Many of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories and new age occultism.